What do the symbols mean?

Recent articles on Gay Spirituality & Culture are marked with symbols to indicate the author's (or the subject of the post's) general perspective on things. For example, a post providing a first-person look at spirituality is coming from the first-person, subjective angle (Upper-Left quadrant). Or a post on discrimination against gays in the military may be marked with a symbol denoting that it's concern is with the objective social and political order (Lower-Right Quadrant).

Above: Quadrants Image from Holons

Quadrants, Angles, or Perspective

	Upper Left Quadrant -- emotional states, sense of self/identity, general mental well-being, understanding of your ultimate concern (inner spirituality)
	Upper Right Quadrant -- detached, objective data about yourself (e.g., biological research into brain states)
	Lower Left Quadrant -- impact on others and how the boundaries of your decision are determined by interpersonal and cultural contexts beyond your control; cultural constructs; theologies, philosophies, world views
	Lower Right Quadrant -- your functioning as an agent in a wider system of interlocking relationships; social forces, economic structures, police and military institutions

With regard to quadrants, Gay Spirituality & Culture's vision is that when thinking about and living out our lives it's important not to leave any major angle out of our awareness. We can't reduce interior psychological awareness to the output of brain waves (not without gross reductionistic materialism), nor can we ignore the biological correlates in brain waves to the subjective experiences of our mind (not without gross idealism). To give another example: We shouldn't discuss the output of culture (books, art, ideas, theology, philosophy, etc.) as if they were Platonic Ideas dropped from the pure realm of Spirit; we must insist that they are conditioned by (though not determined by) our social, economic, poltical, and natural dimensions. That's (partly) why our approach is called integral.

To learn more about angles, quadrants, or perspectives, see Joe Perez's Rising Up: Reflections on Gay Culture, Politics, and Spirit or Ken Wilber's Integral Spirituality. You may also want to check out this brief introduction to quadrants and altitudes written by the staff of Holons, an integral newsletter.